Site Mobile Navigation

At Least 8 Are Missing After Landslide in Swiss Alps

The village of Bondo, in southern Switzerland, that was evacuated after a landslide pummeled the town on Wednesday.Credit
Giancarlo Cattaneo/Keystone, via Associated Press

At least eight people were missing on Thursday a day after a landslide swept through a small village in the Swiss Alps, the local police said.

Around 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, mud and debris cascaded into the village of Bondo in the Graubünden region of southeastern Switzerland, damaging buildings and wiping out parts of the main road through the area.

Video captured the initial moment that debris broke off the mountain face and tumbled into the valley below, creating an shock so severe that it had a magnitude of 3.

The village, located on the border with Italy, was evacuated early Wednesday after around 4 million cubic meters, or 140 million cubic feet, of mud and rock broke off from the Piz Cengalo mountain and set off an automatic alarm. Some residents were evacuated by helicopter.

Dozens of residents of Bondo, a village of 200 people, remained displaced from their homes on Thursday, and the authorities said in a news conference in nearby Stampa that the village would be unreachable until at least Friday.

Photo

With the main road impassable, a search and rescue team arrived by helicopter on Thursday.Credit
Gian Ehrenzeller/Keystone, via Associated Press

Among the eight people confirmed missing are German, Austrian and Swiss citizens. Officials say they are using planes and dogs to search the area around the village.

“We immediately deployed a helicopter from the Swiss Army with thermal sensing technology, and we searched all night using this technology,” Andrea Mittner, a senior police official, told reporters. “We found nothing.”

Around 120 emergency responders and members of the military were searching the area on Thursday.

Pictures and videos from the scene showed the scale of the landslide, which covered over three miles.

Several homes were damaged, and the main road through the village was impassable because of the debris and rocks, and entirely washed-out in some places.

Photo

About 140 million cubic feet of mud and rock broke off from the Piz Cengalo mountain and inundated the village.Credit
Gian Ehrenzeller/Keystone, via Associated Press

There were reports of an additional five or six people missing, but officials said they had not been able to confirm that information. “We don’t know yet whether this group is missing in this area, or whether these people are missing at all,” Mr. Mittner said.

Bondo, like other villages in the region, is equipped with an automatic warning system that alerts residents to the risk of landslides. The alarm system was set up after a large 2012 rockfall caused landslides in the area around Piz Cengalo.